16 ms·

All this research, and not a single A/B/X test. Also very common among audiophiles, even ones focused on being scientific, replacing human testing with precise

by ipsum2 3y ago

All this research, and not a single A/B/X test. Also very common among audiophiles, even ones focused on being scientific, replacing human testing with precise instrumentation that ends up not mattering in practice.

aqme28 3y ago
Yes. Every time I see coffee advice like this I wonder if there's ever been an actual study on it. I don't think I can tell the difference between coffee at 92 degrees vs 99 degrees. What percent of people actually can?
- hackideiomat 3y ago
  https://youtube.com/watch?v=pZ-hKmz4PIY https://youtube.com/watch?v=pZ-hKmz4PIY
  - dmix 3y ago
    Two people testing one brew (per temp) but interesting none the less.
  - tednjrdjyrr 3y ago
    The access the internet gives us to this kind of content is incredible. What a fun and interesting diversion into coffee brewing temperatures and how it might affect taste.
- Frost1x 3y ago
  I think it's worth keeping in mind tweaking different parameters often yields varied levels of improvements. Going from near freezing to hot water yields very different results that you can definitely discern for example. Coarseness of the grind definitely effects results: if you run hot water over raw beans it's not great meanwhile if you could say grind to a point you broke down many molecular bonds in the bean (I'm using the term "grind" loosely here to illustrate a point), you'd lose all the nifty chemicals that you want to taste and so on. So there's varied ways to adjust each given aspect of preparing coffee (including times of everything, the process itself, the order of the process and so on). And how you tweak each given aspect will have varying degrees of noticeable effect on the taste of the drink (some have almost none). Beans roasted 3 weeks ago probably won't be discernable from beans roasted 4 weeks ago. Beans roasted today might be discernable from those roasted a week ago, though. Each of these aspects isn't inherently independent of one another either. Coarseness, brew time, and pressure are often very closely linked and adjusting one or the other often requires adjusting the other for desirable results. Now while some of these sort of tweaks are tiny, combining all sorts of tiny tweaks can result in noticeable larger differences. It might not be obvious what it is because of all of the small component improvements, but the end result is something that, even slightly, is noticeably improved, which is true for about anything. Ultimately the question is does all this effort combined yield enough improvement that's noticeable. Maybe one small improvement isn't noticeable like adjusting from 92 to 99 degrees. That combined with a series of other tweaks might yield something worth the effort though. I know when I first started brewing espresso at home I laughed at a lot of advice thinking certain aspects of the brewing process were silly so I'd skip them or just ignore it all together. Things like weighing my beans, tweaking grind size, and so on. My first few weeks of espresso drinks were... pretty disappointing. Why can Starbucks (which in terms of espresso is often lackluster) make better espresso than me at home? As I went down the rabbit hole and adopted more silly strategies, I tasted notable improvements. It's not just me either, I've had friends try throughout the process and it went from "thanks, that was drinkable" being nice to my not so great coffee to now people saying "wow that's really great, how do you make that, that's the best coffee I've had." It sounds stupid until you start tweaking all these little parts. I'm not entirely scientific about it, much of it is a hit of an art and inference with science mixed in. I'm at a point now where I think no matter how many slightly improved tweaks I make, I won't be able to tell the difference and it's not worth the time. From your example, 92 to 99 C might come down to how much energy the water actually has and how precise you can measure it. When you're approaching boiling, some parts of the water probably is boiling and made a phase transition, you're measuring an average of some other part that may not be a good sample of the whole. Those parts that are boiling may result in damaging organics in what you're brewing leading to bitter flavors you don't want, so backing off gives you some margins of error in your measurement. 7 degrees might not make too much difference if it's say 95 and 88 C (a little more time might make up for similar results) but something approaching a critical point like boiling might actually matter.
  - dmix 3y ago
    This topic was made for HN lol (some) Programmers can't do anything without knowing everything about it
    - kelipso 3y ago
      I swear. There's this implication that the idea of having cooking recipes are unscientific in that post... "Without understanding why one sautes the onions, why should I saute the onions??? Where's the peer reviewed article proving that this results in statistically significantly improved taste?"
      - notjoemama 3y ago
        I tend to think it's a side effect of having a curious mind. Anyone can saute onions. It's the curious that stop to ask, "Why does this taste so good and how can I do it again?" I think the best chef's are the one's that are curious in the same way. edit: auto correct did me dirty
        kelipso 3y ago
        That's an aspect but the best chefs have mastered sauteeing onions before exploring and being curious is what I was trying to get at.
        aksss 3y ago
        It’s time for the America’s Test Kitchen book on Coffee.
      - parineum 3y ago
        The purpose of knowing why your doing things is so that you can tweak things and understand the implications. Sauteing onions is partially good because it caramelizing some of the sugars. What other sugary things could I saute? I rarely exactly follow a recipe so it's important to understand what effects the steps have so you can experiment with them. I've been trying to perfect cookies for years.
- lostlogin 3y ago
  I’m not sure it matters. For any interest or hobby, doing it my way, to my taste, is the entire point. If someone else doesn’t like it or can’t tell, that might actually be an advantage. I don’t think I would be able to tell - I make fussy coffee, but not to this extreme.
- Drew_ 3y ago
  Researchers from UC Davis Coffee Center posted a great paper about exactly this a few years ago: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73341-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73341-4
gwd 3y ago
At least the video by James Hoffman I watched yesterday (too lazy to find the link, it's somewhere else in the comments) wasn't about experience, but about objective measures: How charged were the particles, how long did it take X amount of water go through the same amount of beans? The guy in the video even said he wasn't sure if the resulting coffee was better or not, just that it slowed down extraction, which usually ends up with more chemicals in your espresso afterwards.
- davidmurdoch 3y ago
  Are more chemicals good or bad?
  - elromulous 3y ago
    Everything is a "chemical". Generally increased extraction (i.e. getting more "coffee" into the water) is better.
  - xeromal 3y ago
    Considering making coffee is extracting flavor chemicals from coffee beans into water, more chemicals would be good.
    - davidmurdoch 3y ago
      I forgot the "/s" on my comment.
      - xeromal 3y ago
        Yeah I've come to expect sarcasm on Reddit but hackernews I just assume everyone's being genuine
        vpribish 3y ago
        hear hear. keep hacker news sincere
15457345234 3y ago
It's a hobby for people with a particular personality type. Tight control of variables and precision is part of the enjoyment of the hobby. It's the same as obsessing over whether your model train engines have the precise same badges and labelling that existed in real life. Women do yoga. Men do this. Or obsessively sharpen knives or practice their golf swing until it's robotically consistent. Think of it as a form of meditation for a particular type of person.
- Belphemur 3y ago
  As much as I agree with the sentiment of your comment, the part "Women do yoga" is quite reductive and can easily be interpreted as "women can't be that type of person" which I disagree with.
  - dmix 3y ago
    Hobbies are often heavily gendered. You don't see many men doing knitting but it's also a very careful technical thing. And it's full of strong opinions just like coffee or golf or whatever. It's just saying it out loud isn't very polite unless you're a comedian or jesting, because people will automatically read into it as a moral or intelligence judgement. But otherwise I think it's pretty obvious men typically go very hard into their new hobbies, almost obsessively. Additionally, they often do it for short periods before finding a new one to jump into next month and then suddenly they forgot about coffee and are learning how speakers work. Generalizations are Generalizations, that's how they work.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - the_af 3y ago
      > Hobbies are often heavily gendered. > But otherwise I think it's pretty obvious men typically go very hard into their new hobbies I'm a man. The other day I wanted to see if there was a way to fix one of my daughter's Barbie dolls and ended up in a huge rabbit hole of Barbie dolls collectors, which you can peruse (at your own risk) in r/Barbie, YouTube and others. These are (mostly) grown women obsessing about their dolls collections, swapping heads and bodies, re-rooting hair, fixing damaged hair, sewing their own custom clothes, asking questions about "color charts" (to match parts from different dolls), re-painting face details from scratch and consulting authoritative databases that list every Barbie head by year and detail which bodies use it. Some tattoo their dolls. One had replicated the main characters from Cyberpunk 2077, meaning she was also a cyberpunk and videogame nerd. There are some men there too, but I grant you it's mostly women. Their attention to detail and obsession with their hobby rivals model train enthusiasts. I think in this day and age there's a hobby for anything, and women are not only not excluded from this trend, but tend to be passionate about it. I've also found women who are nerds about coffee, mind you. Many have YouTube channels about this.
cyanydeez 3y ago
if the input and output are humans, what do you imagine a nonhuman test gains you?
- bee_rider 3y ago
  You should not put humans in your espresso machine.
  - gpderetta 3y ago
    Indeed, they tend to clog it.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      The clog is only the beginning! If the person is Dutch that is.
    - quaddo 3y ago
      I've heard you get better results if you spritz them.
bee_rider 3y ago
It is already a common industry trick, so there’s no need to establish that people prefer it. Whether or not it produces somehow objectively better espresso, it is still possible to study the mechanism behind the reduced clumping and to quantify the static charge changes.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
delftlander_961 3y ago
This reminds me of visiting a locally-famous coffee shop where the barista won some international competition for best-tasting coffee. The line was long, but I was told it was well worth the wait. He has this whole process to make a pour over: carefully weigh the beans, three precision kettles set to different temperatures, carefully pouring, weighing, timing the water from each kettle—he even discards half of the first extraction. All of this is because different compounds are extracted at different rates based on temperature, and the first one is considered an off-flavor if it’s too strong but enjoyable nuance in the right amount. The line was long because the brewing process was long, and he could only focus on one cup at a time. In the end, by the time the freshly-brewed cup got to me, it was lukewarm disappointment. It might have been the best-tasting coffee ever if hot, but it needed an Ember.
AlbertCory 3y ago
https://open.substack.com/pub/albertcory50/p/google-busts-a-coffee-myth https://open.substack.com/pub/albertcory50/p/google-busts-a-... On that topic: Jerry and I and some other Googlers did test one variable, at least.
- mortos 3y ago
  You might find it interesting that suggestions are shifting. It largely depends on the roast level, darker roasts should have a fresher date. However there are now some "Nordic light" roasters that specifically recommended 2 or 3 months of resting for the coffee. The flavor does change over that period, not really getting stale but some flavors deepen and improve.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    > suggestions are shifting. what does that mean?
    - mortos 3y ago
      Sorry I just meant that I see people online suggesting longer resting periods, especially for lighter roasts.
      - AlbertCory 3y ago
        on this whole topic, there are 999 posts theorizing about what makes better coffee for every one about "can you taste it?" It IS hard to organize a tasting, and then what have you proved? But the evidence adds up, eventually.
rfrey 3y ago
I haven't read the paper, but James Hoffman and others regularly do blind tasting with 3 cups, testing things like extraction. In the case of extraction, for example, they'll measure extraction with precision scales, then have 2 cups at one level (either the "optimal" extraction or slightly below/above) and the third cup at the other level. They don't know which is the outlier, but they're to guess. They seem to be very open when they're not sure or the difference to them is marginal. They try to control variables like temperature. I don't know if they make sure the person putting the cups down doesn't know which is which.
GuB-42 3y ago
Extraction yield differences at the levels shown in the paper is no small thing (8.2% to 8.9% TDS). And I am sure an experienced coffee taster will spot the difference instantly. There is also the practical aspect of making less of a mess out of your grinder, as charged coffee particles tend to go where you don't want when to go and stick there. But you can think of it differently and see it as a way to have a cup that is just as good but using less coffee, because it is better extracted. Less waste is a good thing, for the environment, for the coffee brewing industry, and for you.
- akira2501 3y ago
  > There is also the practical aspect of making less of a mess out of your grinder, as charged coffee particles tend to go where you don't want when to go and stick there. I tried the RDT once. I find absolutely nothing practical about it. The mistake is trying to grind straight into the basket. I started grinding into a separate large cylindrical receptacle (a.k.a. a Tall Cup) that I can fit directly under the spout and catch all the grindings with. Wait 10 seconds for the static to settle.. bang the cup three times on the counter... then pour the grindings into the basket. Manages most of the static, nearly all of the mess, and makes the whole operation so much easier and efficient. The espresso space is filled with people who are _content_ to spend 95% of the effort chasing the last 5% of quality. I cannot truck with those people.
  - GuB-42 3y ago
    - According to James Hoffmann video on the subject, when he tried to replicate the results, the choice of grinder had a big impact. In the paper, they used a Mahlkönig EK43, a very popular grinder in cafés, less so at home. - Your routine with the cup can count as "high effort", and if spraying a bit of water on the beans lets you avoid that extra step, it may actually be an improvement in terms of effort. In the end, I think it all comes down to your grinder and tolerance for effort. Some people have espresso as a ritual, and as far as rituals go, that one is harmless and results in a good cup of coffee, so I am all for it. Not my thing either though, and while I like playing a bit from time to time just to see what can be done with some effort, my routine is as simple as it can get. Note that I happen to have a doser grinder, which is usually not ideal in a home setting, but it does a good job with the static, essentially what you are doing but as built-in feature of the grinder.

by ipsum2 3y ago

aqme28 3y ago

Yes. Every time I see coffee advice like this I wonder if there's ever been an actual study on it. I don't think I can tell the difference between coffee at 92 degrees vs 99 degrees. What percent of people actually can?

hackideiomat 3y ago
https://youtube.com/watch?v=pZ-hKmz4PIY https://youtube.com/watch?v=pZ-hKmz4PIY
- dmix 3y ago
  Two people testing one brew (per temp) but interesting none the less.
- tednjrdjyrr 3y ago
  The access the internet gives us to this kind of content is incredible. What a fun and interesting diversion into coffee brewing temperatures and how it might affect taste.
Frost1x 3y ago
I think it's worth keeping in mind tweaking different parameters often yields varied levels of improvements. Going from near freezing to hot water yields very different results that you can definitely discern for example. Coarseness of the grind definitely effects results: if you run hot water over raw beans it's not great meanwhile if you could say grind to a point you broke down many molecular bonds in the bean (I'm using the term "grind" loosely here to illustrate a point), you'd lose all the nifty chemicals that you want to taste and so on. So there's varied ways to adjust each given aspect of preparing coffee (including times of everything, the process itself, the order of the process and so on). And how you tweak each given aspect will have varying degrees of noticeable effect on the taste of the drink (some have almost none). Beans roasted 3 weeks ago probably won't be discernable from beans roasted 4 weeks ago. Beans roasted today might be discernable from those roasted a week ago, though. Each of these aspects isn't inherently independent of one another either. Coarseness, brew time, and pressure are often very closely linked and adjusting one or the other often requires adjusting the other for desirable results. Now while some of these sort of tweaks are tiny, combining all sorts of tiny tweaks can result in noticeable larger differences. It might not be obvious what it is because of all of the small component improvements, but the end result is something that, even slightly, is noticeably improved, which is true for about anything. Ultimately the question is does all this effort combined yield enough improvement that's noticeable. Maybe one small improvement isn't noticeable like adjusting from 92 to 99 degrees. That combined with a series of other tweaks might yield something worth the effort though. I know when I first started brewing espresso at home I laughed at a lot of advice thinking certain aspects of the brewing process were silly so I'd skip them or just ignore it all together. Things like weighing my beans, tweaking grind size, and so on. My first few weeks of espresso drinks were... pretty disappointing. Why can Starbucks (which in terms of espresso is often lackluster) make better espresso than me at home? As I went down the rabbit hole and adopted more silly strategies, I tasted notable improvements. It's not just me either, I've had friends try throughout the process and it went from "thanks, that was drinkable" being nice to my not so great coffee to now people saying "wow that's really great, how do you make that, that's the best coffee I've had." It sounds stupid until you start tweaking all these little parts. I'm not entirely scientific about it, much of it is a hit of an art and inference with science mixed in. I'm at a point now where I think no matter how many slightly improved tweaks I make, I won't be able to tell the difference and it's not worth the time. From your example, 92 to 99 C might come down to how much energy the water actually has and how precise you can measure it. When you're approaching boiling, some parts of the water probably is boiling and made a phase transition, you're measuring an average of some other part that may not be a good sample of the whole. Those parts that are boiling may result in damaging organics in what you're brewing leading to bitter flavors you don't want, so backing off gives you some margins of error in your measurement. 7 degrees might not make too much difference if it's say 95 and 88 C (a little more time might make up for similar results) but something approaching a critical point like boiling might actually matter.
- dmix 3y ago
  This topic was made for HN lol (some) Programmers can't do anything without knowing everything about it
  - kelipso 3y ago
    I swear. There's this implication that the idea of having cooking recipes are unscientific in that post... "Without understanding why one sautes the onions, why should I saute the onions??? Where's the peer reviewed article proving that this results in statistically significantly improved taste?"
    - notjoemama 3y ago
      I tend to think it's a side effect of having a curious mind. Anyone can saute onions. It's the curious that stop to ask, "Why does this taste so good and how can I do it again?" I think the best chef's are the one's that are curious in the same way. edit: auto correct did me dirty
      - kelipso 3y ago
        That's an aspect but the best chefs have mastered sauteeing onions before exploring and being curious is what I was trying to get at.
      - aksss 3y ago
        It’s time for the America’s Test Kitchen book on Coffee.
    - parineum 3y ago
      The purpose of knowing why your doing things is so that you can tweak things and understand the implications. Sauteing onions is partially good because it caramelizing some of the sugars. What other sugary things could I saute? I rarely exactly follow a recipe so it's important to understand what effects the steps have so you can experiment with them. I've been trying to perfect cookies for years.
lostlogin 3y ago
I’m not sure it matters. For any interest or hobby, doing it my way, to my taste, is the entire point. If someone else doesn’t like it or can’t tell, that might actually be an advantage. I don’t think I would be able to tell - I make fussy coffee, but not to this extreme.
Drew_ 3y ago
Researchers from UC Davis Coffee Center posted a great paper about exactly this a few years ago: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73341-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73341-4

gwd 3y ago

At least the video by James Hoffman I watched yesterday (too lazy to find the link, it's somewhere else in the comments) wasn't about experience, but about objective measures: How charged were the particles, how long did it take X amount of water go through the same amount of beans? The guy in the video even said he wasn't sure if the resulting coffee was better or not, just that it slowed down extraction, which usually ends up with more chemicals in your espresso afterwards.

davidmurdoch 3y ago
Are more chemicals good or bad?
- elromulous 3y ago
  Everything is a "chemical". Generally increased extraction (i.e. getting more "coffee" into the water) is better.
- xeromal 3y ago
  Considering making coffee is extracting flavor chemicals from coffee beans into water, more chemicals would be good.
  - davidmurdoch 3y ago
    I forgot the "/s" on my comment.
    - xeromal 3y ago
      Yeah I've come to expect sarcasm on Reddit but hackernews I just assume everyone's being genuine
      - vpribish 3y ago
        hear hear. keep hacker news sincere

15457345234 3y ago

It's a hobby for people with a particular personality type. Tight control of variables and precision is part of the enjoyment of the hobby. It's the same as obsessing over whether your model train engines have the precise same badges and labelling that existed in real life. Women do yoga. Men do this. Or obsessively sharpen knives or practice their golf swing until it's robotically consistent. Think of it as a form of meditation for a particular type of person.

Belphemur 3y ago
As much as I agree with the sentiment of your comment, the part "Women do yoga" is quite reductive and can easily be interpreted as "women can't be that type of person" which I disagree with.
- dmix 3y ago
  Hobbies are often heavily gendered. You don't see many men doing knitting but it's also a very careful technical thing. And it's full of strong opinions just like coffee or golf or whatever. It's just saying it out loud isn't very polite unless you're a comedian or jesting, because people will automatically read into it as a moral or intelligence judgement. But otherwise I think it's pretty obvious men typically go very hard into their new hobbies, almost obsessively. Additionally, they often do it for short periods before finding a new one to jump into next month and then suddenly they forgot about coffee and are learning how speakers work. Generalizations are Generalizations, that's how they work.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - the_af 3y ago
    > Hobbies are often heavily gendered. > But otherwise I think it's pretty obvious men typically go very hard into their new hobbies I'm a man. The other day I wanted to see if there was a way to fix one of my daughter's Barbie dolls and ended up in a huge rabbit hole of Barbie dolls collectors, which you can peruse (at your own risk) in r/Barbie, YouTube and others. These are (mostly) grown women obsessing about their dolls collections, swapping heads and bodies, re-rooting hair, fixing damaged hair, sewing their own custom clothes, asking questions about "color charts" (to match parts from different dolls), re-painting face details from scratch and consulting authoritative databases that list every Barbie head by year and detail which bodies use it. Some tattoo their dolls. One had replicated the main characters from Cyberpunk 2077, meaning she was also a cyberpunk and videogame nerd. There are some men there too, but I grant you it's mostly women. Their attention to detail and obsession with their hobby rivals model train enthusiasts. I think in this day and age there's a hobby for anything, and women are not only not excluded from this trend, but tend to be passionate about it. I've also found women who are nerds about coffee, mind you. Many have YouTube channels about this.

cyanydeez 3y ago

if the input and output are humans, what do you imagine a nonhuman test gains you?

bee_rider 3y ago
You should not put humans in your espresso machine.
- gpderetta 3y ago
  Indeed, they tend to clog it.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    The clog is only the beginning! If the person is Dutch that is.
  - quaddo 3y ago
    I've heard you get better results if you spritz them.

bee_rider 3y ago

It is already a common industry trick, so there’s no need to establish that people prefer it. Whether or not it produces somehow objectively better espresso, it is still possible to study the mechanism behind the reduced clumping and to quantify the static charge changes.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

delftlander_961 3y ago

This reminds me of visiting a locally-famous coffee shop where the barista won some international competition for best-tasting coffee. The line was long, but I was told it was well worth the wait. He has this whole process to make a pour over: carefully weigh the beans, three precision kettles set to different temperatures, carefully pouring, weighing, timing the water from each kettle—he even discards half of the first extraction. All of this is because different compounds are extracted at different rates based on temperature, and the first one is considered an off-flavor if it’s too strong but enjoyable nuance in the right amount. The line was long because the brewing process was long, and he could only focus on one cup at a time. In the end, by the time the freshly-brewed cup got to me, it was lukewarm disappointment. It might have been the best-tasting coffee ever if hot, but it needed an Ember.

AlbertCory 3y ago

https://open.substack.com/pub/albertcory50/p/google-busts-a-coffee-myth https://open.substack.com/pub/albertcory50/p/google-busts-a-... On that topic: Jerry and I and some other Googlers did test one variable, at least.

mortos 3y ago
You might find it interesting that suggestions are shifting. It largely depends on the roast level, darker roasts should have a fresher date. However there are now some "Nordic light" roasters that specifically recommended 2 or 3 months of resting for the coffee. The flavor does change over that period, not really getting stale but some flavors deepen and improve.
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  > suggestions are shifting. what does that mean?
  - mortos 3y ago
    Sorry I just meant that I see people online suggesting longer resting periods, especially for lighter roasts.
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      on this whole topic, there are 999 posts theorizing about what makes better coffee for every one about "can you taste it?" It IS hard to organize a tasting, and then what have you proved? But the evidence adds up, eventually.

rfrey 3y ago

I haven't read the paper, but James Hoffman and others regularly do blind tasting with 3 cups, testing things like extraction. In the case of extraction, for example, they'll measure extraction with precision scales, then have 2 cups at one level (either the "optimal" extraction or slightly below/above) and the third cup at the other level. They don't know which is the outlier, but they're to guess. They seem to be very open when they're not sure or the difference to them is marginal. They try to control variables like temperature. I don't know if they make sure the person putting the cups down doesn't know which is which.

GuB-42 3y ago

Extraction yield differences at the levels shown in the paper is no small thing (8.2% to 8.9% TDS). And I am sure an experienced coffee taster will spot the difference instantly. There is also the practical aspect of making less of a mess out of your grinder, as charged coffee particles tend to go where you don't want when to go and stick there. But you can think of it differently and see it as a way to have a cup that is just as good but using less coffee, because it is better extracted. Less waste is a good thing, for the environment, for the coffee brewing industry, and for you.

akira2501 3y ago
> There is also the practical aspect of making less of a mess out of your grinder, as charged coffee particles tend to go where you don't want when to go and stick there. I tried the RDT once. I find absolutely nothing practical about it. The mistake is trying to grind straight into the basket. I started grinding into a separate large cylindrical receptacle (a.k.a. a Tall Cup) that I can fit directly under the spout and catch all the grindings with. Wait 10 seconds for the static to settle.. bang the cup three times on the counter... then pour the grindings into the basket. Manages most of the static, nearly all of the mess, and makes the whole operation so much easier and efficient. The espresso space is filled with people who are _content_ to spend 95% of the effort chasing the last 5% of quality. I cannot truck with those people.
- GuB-42 3y ago
  - According to James Hoffmann video on the subject, when he tried to replicate the results, the choice of grinder had a big impact. In the paper, they used a Mahlkönig EK43, a very popular grinder in cafés, less so at home. - Your routine with the cup can count as "high effort", and if spraying a bit of water on the beans lets you avoid that extra step, it may actually be an improvement in terms of effort. In the end, I think it all comes down to your grinder and tolerance for effort. Some people have espresso as a ritual, and as far as rituals go, that one is harmless and results in a good cup of coffee, so I am all for it. Not my thing either though, and while I like playing a bit from time to time just to see what can be done with some effort, my routine is as simple as it can get. Note that I happen to have a doser grinder, which is usually not ideal in a home setting, but it does a good job with the static, essentially what you are doing but as built-in feature of the grinder.